Viewpoint

The sociological eye means looking at things for what they are, as best we can given the blinders of interest and ideology, of cliché and ritualized belief. It is not an individual enterprise. Chaining our efforts together as a long-term network of theorists and researchers improves one’s own sociological vision, provided we make the effort. The sociological eye holds up a periscope above the tides of political and intellectual partisanship, spying out the patterns of social life in every direction.

Thursday, June 20, 2013

In
the last few years, many people have come to believe they have a formula for
overthrowing authoritarian governments and putting democracy in their place.
The method is mass peaceful demonstrations, persisting until they draw huge
support, both internally and internationally, intensifying as government
atrocities while putting them down are publicized by the media. This was the
model for the “color revolutions” (orange, pink, velvet, etc.) in the ex-Soviet
bloc; for the Arab Spring of 2011 and its imitators; further back it has roots
in the US civil rights movement.

Such
revolutions succeed or fail in varying degrees, as has been obvious in the
aftermath of the different Arab Spring revolts. Why this is the case requires a
more complicated analysis. The type of revolution consisting in the righteous
mobilization of the people until the authoritarians crack and take flight may
be called a tipping point revolution.
It contrasts with the state breakdown theory of revolution, formulated
by historical sociologists Theda Skocpol, Jack Goldstone, Charles Tilly and
others, to show the long-term roots of major revolutions such as the French
Revolution of 1789 and the Russia Revolution of 1917, and that I used to
predict the 1989-91 anti-Soviet revolution. Major revolutions are those that
bring about big structural changes (the rise or fall of communism, the end of
feudalism, etc.). I will argue that tipping point revolutions, without
long-term basis in the structural factors that bring state breakdown, are only
moderately successful at best; and they often fall short even of modest
changes, devolving into destructive civil wars, or outright failure to change
the regime at all.

Tipping Point Revolutions with Easy Success

Tipping
points revolutions are not new. Some of the early ones were quick and virtually
bloodless. For instance the February 1848 revolution in France: There had been
agitation for six months to widen the very restrictive franchise for the token
legislature. The government finally cracked down on the main form of
mobilization-- a banqueting campaign in which prominent gentlemen met in dining
rooms to proclaim speeches and drink toasts to revolutionary slogans. The ban
provided a rallying point. The day of the banquet, a crowd gathered, despite
30,000 troops called out to enforce the ban. There were minor scuffles, but
most soldiers stood around uneasily, unsure what to do, many of them
sympathetic to the crowd. Next morning rumours swept through Paris that
revolution was coming. Shops did not open, workers stayed home, servants became
surly with their masters and mistresses. In the eerie atmosphere of
near-deserted streets, trees were chopped down and cobble-stones dug up to make
barricades. Liberal members of the
national legislature visited the king, demanding that the prime minister be
replaced. This modest step was
easy; he was dismissed; but who would take his place? No one wanted to be prime
minister; a succession of candidates wavered and declined, no one feeling
confident of taking control.

Mid-afternoon of the second day, just after the
prime minister’s resignation was announced, a pumped-up crowd outside a
government building was fired upon. The accidental discharge of a gun by a
nervous soldier set off a contagious volley, killing 50. This panicky use of
force did not deter the crowd, but emboldened it. During the night, the king
offered to abdicate. But in favor of whom? Other royal relatives also declined.
The king panicked and fled the palace, along with assorted duchesses; crowds
were encroaching on the palace grounds, and now they invaded the royal chambers
and even sat on the royal throne. In a holiday atmosphere, a Republic was
announced, the provisional assembly set plans to reform itself through
elections.

In
three days the revolution was accomplished. If we stop the clock here, the
revolution was an easy success.
The People collectively had decided the regime must go, and in a matter
of hours, it bowed to the pressure of that overwhelming public. It was one of those moments that
exemplify what Durkheim called collective consciousness at its most palpable.

This
moment of near-unanimity did not last. In the first weeks of enthusiasm, even
the rich and the nobility-- who had just lost their monopoly of power-- made
subscriptions for the poor and wounded; the conservative provinces rejoiced in
the deeds of Paris. The honeymoon began to dissipate within three weeks.
Conservative and radical factions struggled among the volunteer national guard,
and began to lay up their own supplies of arms. Conservatives in the
countryside and financiers in the city mobilized against the welfare-state
policies of Paris. Elections to a
constitutional assembly, two months in, returned an array of conservatives and
moderates; the socialists and liberals who led the revolution were reduced to a
small minority, upheld only by radical crowds who invaded the assembly hall and
shouted down opponents. In May, the national guard dispersed the mob and
arrested radical leaders. By June there was a second revolt, this time confined
to the working-class part of the city. The Assembly was united against the
revolution; in fact they had provoked it by abolishing the public workshops set
up for unemployed workers. This time the army kept its discipline. The
emotional mood had switched directions. The provinces of France now had their
own collective consciousness, an outpouring of volunteers rushing to Paris by
train to battle the revolutionaries. Within five days, the June revolution was
over; this time with bloody fighting, ten thousand killed and wounded, and more
executed afterwards or sent to prison colonies.

The
tipping point mechanism did not tip this time; instead of everyone going over
to the victorious side (thereby ensuring its victory), the conflict fractured into two
opposing camps. Instead of one revolutionary collective consciousness sweeping
up everyone, it split into rival identities, each with its own solidarity, its
own emotional energy and moral righteousness. Since the opposing forces, both
strongly mobilized, were unevenly matched, the result was a bloody struggle,
and then destruction of the weaker side. In the following months, the mood
flowed increasingly conservative. Elections in December brought in a huge
majority for a President-- Napoleon’s nephew, symbol of a idealized
authoritarian regime of the past-- who eventually overturned the democratic
reforms and made himself emperor. The revolutionary surge had lasted just four
months.

Tipping Point Revolutions that Fail

The
sequence of revolts in 1848 France shows both the tipping point mechanism at
its strongest, and the failure not so far downstream to bring about structural
change. Modern history is full of failed revolutions, and continues to be right
up through the latest news. I will cite one example of a tipping point
revolution that failed entirely, not even taking power briefly. The democracy
movement in China centered on protestors occupying Tiananmen Square in Beijing,
lasting seven weeks from mid-April to early June 1989. Until the last two
weeks, the authorities did not crack down; local police acted unsure, just like
French troops in February 1848; some even displayed sympathy with the
demonstrators.

The
numbers of protestors surged and declined several times. Initially, students
from the prestigious Beijing universities (where the Red Guards movement had
been launched 20 years earlier) set up a vigil in Tiananmen Square to mourn the
death of a reform-oriented Communist leader. This was China’s center of public
attention, in front of the old Imperial Palace, the place for official rituals,
and thus a target for impromptu counter-rituals. Beginning with a few thousand students on April 17,
the crowd fell to a few hundred by the fourth day, but revived after a skirmish
with police as militants took their protest to the gate of the nearby
government compound where the political elite lived. Injuries were slight and
no arrests were made, but indignation over police brutality renewed the
movement, which grew to 100,000-200,000 for the state funeral on day 5.
Militants hijacked the ritual by kneeling on the steps of the ceremonial hall
flanking Tiananmen Square, in the style of traditional supplicants to the
emperor. The same day rioting broke out in other cities around China, including
arson attacks, with casualties on both sides. Four days later (day 10) the
government newspaper officially condemned the movement-- the first time it had
been portrayed negatively; next day 50-100,000 Beijing students responded,
breaking through police lines to reoccupy the Square. So far counter-escalation
favored the protestors.

The
government now switched to a policy of conciliation and negotiation. This
brought a 2-weeks lull; by May 4 (day 18) most students had returned to
class. On May 13 (day 28), the
remaining militants launched a new tactic: a hunger strike, initially
recruiting 300; over the next 2 days it recaptured public attention, and grew
to 3000 hunger strikers. Big crowds, growing to 300,000, now flocked to the
Square to view and support them. The militants had another ritual weapon: the
arrival on May 15 of Soviet leader Gorbachev for a state visit, then at the
height of his fame as a Communist reformer. The official welcome had to be
moved to the airport, but the state meeting in the ceremonial hall flanking Tiananmen
was marred by the noisy demonstration outside. On May 17, as Gorbachev left,
over one million Beijing residents from all social classes marched to support
the hunger strikers. The militants had captured the attention center of the
ceremonial gathering; the bandwagon was building to a peak. Visitors to Tiananmen
were generally organized by work units, who provided transportation and
sometimes even paid the marchers. A logistics structure was created to fund the
food and shelter for those who occupied the Square. The organizational base of
the Communist regime, at least in the capital, was tipping towards revolution.
Around the country, too, there were supporting demonstrations in 400 cities.
Local governments were indecisive; some Communist Party committees openly
endorsed the movement; some authorities provided free transportation by train
for hundred of thousands of students to travel to Beijing to join in.

The
tipping point did not tip. The Communist elite met outside the city in a
showdown among themselves. A collective decision was made; a few dissenters,
including some army generals, were removed and arrested. On May 19, martial law was declared.
Military forces were called from distant regions, lacking ties to Beijing
demonstrators. The next four days were a showdown in the streets; crowds of
residents, especially workers, blocked the army convoys; soldiers rode in open
trucks, unarmed-- the regime still trying to use as little force as possible,
and also distrustful of giving out ammunition-- and often were overwhelmed by
residents. Crowds used a mixture of persuasion and food offerings-- army
logistics having broken down by the unreliability of passage through the
streets-- and sometimes force, stoning and beating isolated soldiers. On May
24, the regime pulled back the troops to bases outside the city. But it did not
give up. The most reliable army units were moved to the front, some tasked with
watching for defections among less reliable units. In another week strong
forces had been assembled in the center of Beijing.

Momentum
was swinging back the other way. Student protestors in the Square increasingly
divided between moderates and militants; by the time the order to clear the
Square was given for June 3, the number occupying was down to 4000. There was
one last surge of violence-- not in Tiananmen Square itself, although the name
became so famous that most outsiders think there was a massacre there-- but in
the streets as residents attempted to block the army's movement once again.
Crowds fought with stones and gasoline bombs, burning army vehicles and, by
some reports, the soldiers inside. In this emotional atmosphere, as both sides
spread stories of the other’s atrocities, something on the order of 50 soldiers and police were
killed, and 400-800 civilians (estimates varying widely). Some soldiers took
revenge for prior attacks by firing at fleeing opponents and beating those they
caught. In Tiananmen Square, the early morning of June 4, the dwindling
militants were allowed to march out through the encircling troops.

International
protest and domestic horror were to no avail; a sufficiently adamant and
organizationally coherent regime easily imposed its superior force. Outside
Beijing, protests continued for several days in other cities; hundreds more
were killed. Organizational discipline was reestablished by a purge; over the
following year, CCP members who had sympathized with the revolt were arrested,
jailed, and sent to labor camps. Dissident workers were often executed;
students got off easier, as members of the elite. Freedom of the media, which
had been loosend during the reform period of 1980s, and briefly flourished
during the height of the democracy protests in early May, was now replaced by
strict control. Economic reforms,
although briefly questioned in the aftermath of 1989, resumed but political
reforms were rescinded. A failed
tipping point revolution not only fails to meet its goals; it reinforces
authoritarianism.

If the
Chinese government had the power to crack down by sending out its security
agents and arresting dissidents all over the country, why didn't they do so
earlier, instead of waiting until Tiananmen Square was cleared? Because this was the center of the tipping-point
mechanism. As long as the rebellious assembly went on, tension existed as to
which way the regime would go. If it couldn't meet this challenge, the regime
would be deserted. This was in question as long as all eyes were on Tiananmen.
Once attention was broken up, all those security agents could fan out around
the country, picking off suspects one by one, ultimately arresting tens of
thousands. That is why centralized and decentralized forms of rebellion are so
different: centralized rebellions potentially very short and sudden;
decentralized ones long, grinding and much more destructive.

We
like to believe that any government that uses force against its own citizens is
so marred by the atrocity that it loses all legitimacy. Yet the 1990s and the
early 2000s were a time of increasing Chinese prestige. The market version of
communist political control became a great economic success; international
economic ties expanded and exacted no penalty for the deaths in June 1989;
domestically Chinese poured their energies into economic opportunities. Protest
movements revived within a decade, but the regime has been quick to clamp down
on them. Even the new means of mobilization
through the internet has proven to be vulnerable to a resolute authoritarian
apparatus, which monitors activists to head off any possible Tiananmen-style
assemblies before they start.

The
failure of the Chinese democracy movement, both in 1989 and since, tells
another sociological lesson. An authoritarian regime that is aware of the
tipping point mechanism need not give in to it; it can keep momentum on its own
side by making sure no bandwagon gets going among the opposition. Such a regime
can be accused of moral violations and even atrocities, but moral condemnation
without a successful mobilization is ineffective. It is when one’s movement is
growing, seemingly expanding its collective consciousness to include virtually
everyone and emotionally overwhelm their opponents, that righteous horror over
atrocities is so arousing. Without this, protests remain sporadic, localized
and ephemeral at best. The modest emotional energy of the protest movement is
no rushing tide; and as this goes on for years, the emotional mood surrounding
such a regime remains stable-- the most important quality of “legitimacy”.

A Contested Tipping Point: The Egyptian Revolution

Egypt
in January-February 2011, the most famous of the Arab Spring revolutions, fits
most closely to the model of 1848 France. Egypt took longer to build up to the
tipping point-- 18 days instead of 3; and there were more casualties in the
initial phase--- 400 killed and
6000 wounded (compared to 50 killed in February 1848) because there was more
struggle before the tipping point was reached. Already from day 7, troops sent to guard Tahrir Square in
Cairo declared themselves neutral, and most of the protestors’ causalities
came from attacks by unofficial government militias or thugs. By day 16, police
who killed demonstrators were arrested, and the dictator Mubarak offered
concessions, which were rejected as unacceptable. On the last day of the 18-day
revolution, everyone had deserted
Mubarak and swung over to the bandwagon, including his own former base
of support, the military. This continuity is one reason why the aftermath did
not prove so revolutionary.

Again,
honeymoon did not last long. By
day 43, women who assembled in Tahrir Square were heckled and threatened, and
Muslim/Christian violence broke out in Cairo. Tahrir Square continued to be
used as a symbolic rallying point, but largely as a scene of clashes between
opposing camps. Structural reforms have not gone very deep. The Islamist
movement elected in the popular vote relegated to a minority the secularists
and liberals who had been most active in the revolution. President Morsi bears
some resemblance to Louis Bonaparte, who rose to power on the reputation of an
ancestral movement-- both had a record of opposition to the regime, but were
ambiguous about their own democratic credentials. The analogy portends a
reactionary outcome to a liberating revolution.

Bottom
line: tipping point revolutions are too superficial to make deep structural
changes. What does?

State Breakdown Revolutions

Three
ingredients must come together to produce a state-breakdown revolution.

(1) Fiscal crisis/ paralysis of state
organization. The state runs out of money, is crushed by debts, or otherwise is
so burdened that it cannot pay its own officials. This often happens through
the expense of past wars or huge costs of current war, especially if one is
losing. The crisis is deep and structural because it cannot be evaded; it is
not a matter of ideology, and whoever takes over responsibility for running the
government faces the same problem. When the crisis grows serious, the army,
police and officials no longer can enforce order because they themselves are
disaffected.

This
was the route to the 1789 French Revolution; the 1640 English Revolution; the
1917 Russian Revolution; and the 1853-68 Japanese revolution (which goes under
the name of the Meiji Restoration). The 1989-91 anti-Soviet revolution
similarly began with struggles to reform the Soviet budget, overburdened by
military costs of the Cold War arms race.

(2)
Elite deadlock between state faction and economic privilege faction. The fiscal
crisis cannot be resolved because the most powerful and privileged groups are
split. Those who benefit economically from the regime resist paying for it
(whether these are landowners, financiers, or even a socialist
military-industrial complex); reformers are those who are directly responsible
for keeping the state running. The split is deep and structural, since it does
not depend on ideological preferences; whoever takes command, whatever their
ideas, must deal with the reality of organizational paralysis. We are not
dealing here with conflict between parties in the public sphere or the
legislature; such partisan squabbling is common, and it may also exist at the
same time as a state crisis. Deadlock between the top elites is far more
serious, because it stymies the two most powerful forces, the economic elite
and the ruling officials.

(3)
Mass mobilization of dissidents. This factor is last in causal order; it
becomes important after state crisis and elite deadlock weaken the enforcement
power of the regime. This power vacuum provides an opportunity for movements of
the public to claim a solution. The ideology of the revolutionaries is often
misleading; it may have nothing to do with the causes of the fiscal crisis
itself (e.g. claiming the issue is one of political reform, democratic
representation, or even returning to some earlier religious or traditional
image of utopia). The importance of ideology is mostly tactical, as an emotion-focusing
device for group action. And in fact, after taking state power, revolutionary
movements often take actions
contrary to their ideology (the early Bolshevik policies on land reform,
for instance; or the Japanese revolutionary shifts between anti-western
antipathy and pro-western imitation). The important thing is that the
revolutionary movement is radical enough to attack the fiscal (and typically
military) problems, to reorganize resources so that the state itself becomes well-funded.
This solves the structural crisis and ends state breakdown, enabling the state
to go on with other reforms. That
is why state breakdown revolutions are able to make deep changes in
institutions: in short, why they become “historic” revolutions.

Reconciling the Two Theories

Tipping
point revolutions are far more common than state breakdown revolutions. The two
mechanisms sometimes coincide; tipping points may occur in the sequence of a
state breakdown, as the third factor, mass mobilization, comes into play. In
1789, once the fiscal crisis and elite deadlock resulted in calling the Estates
General, crowd dynamics led to tipping points that are celebrated as the glory
days of the French revolution. In 1917 Russia, the initial collapse of the government
in February was a crowd-driven tipping point, with a series of abdications
reminiscent of France in February 1848; what made this a deep structural
revolution was the fiscal crisis of war debts, pressure to continue the war
from the Allies who held Russian debt, and eventually a second tipping point in
November in favor of the Soviets. But state breakdown revolutions can happen
without these kinds of crowd-centered tipping points: the 1640 English
Revolution (where fighting went on through 1648); the Chinese revolution
stretching from 1911 to 1949; the Japanese revolution of 1853-68. Conversely, tipping point revolutions
often fail in the absence of state fiscal crisis and elite deadlock; an example
is the 1905 Russian Revolution, which had months of widespread enthusiasm for
reform during the opportunity provided by defeat in the Japanese war, but
nevertheless ended with the government forcefully putting down the revolution.

A
tipping point mechanism, by itself, is a version of mass mobilization which is
the final ingredient of a state paralysis revolution. But mass mobilization
also has a larger structural basis: resources such as transportation and
communication networks that facilitate organizing social movements-- sometimes
in the form of revolutionary armies-- to contend for control of the state. If
such mobilization concentrates in a capital city, it may generate a tipping
point situation. But also such
mobilization can take place throughout the countryside; in which case the
revolution takes more the form of a civil war.

Tipping Point Revolutions and Imitative Revolutions

At
times, waves of revolution spread from one state to another; the success of one
igniting enthusiasm for another. It is the mass mobilization of the tipping
point, the huge crowds and the widespread feeling of solidarity in the
pro-revolutionary majority, that encourages imitations. We can see this because
some of the famous ignition-revolutions were not very effective in making
changes, but they were still imitated. One such wave was in 1848, spreading
from Switzerland and Sicily to the
fragmented states of Italy, and most spectacularly to France. Soon after news
propagated of events in Paris, Europe’s most famous city, crowds demanded
constitutional reforms in Vienna, Berlin, and most of the German states and in
the ethnic regions of the Austrian Empire. Some rulers temporarily fled or made
concessions; troops mutinied; parliaments and revolutionary assemblies met. All
of these were put down within a year and a half. Some were extirpated by the
intervention of outside troops, as conservative rulers supported each other in
regaining control. Of these revolutions, hardly any had a permanent effect.

The
wave of Arab Spring revolts began with a successful tipping point revolution in
Tunisia, imitated with temporary success in Egypt; but failed in Bahrain; had
little effect on an ongoing civil war in Yemen; led to a full-scale military
conflict in Libya that was won by the rebels only through massive outside
military intervention with airpower; in Syria generated a prolonged and
extremely destructive civil war sustained by outside military aid to all
factions. The lesson is that if tipping point revolutions themselves are not
very decisive for structural change, further attempts to imitate tipping points
in other countries have even less to go on. Regimes may or may not be removed
but the downstream situation does not look very different, although there may
be a prolonged period of contention amounting to a failed state.

The
major exception would appear to be the wave of imitative revolts from 1989-91,
as the Soviet bloc fell apart. The states of eastern Europe overthrew their
communist regimes one after another; some with relatively easy tipping point
revolutions as in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and East Germany, and
bloodier battles in Romania and eventually Yugoslavia. A second round of
revolts began in 1991 as the USSR disintegrated into its component ethnic
states. Here was indeed a structural change, dismantling communist political
forms and replacing them with versions of democracy (some continuing control by
ex-communist elites), and shifting the property system to capitalism. But this
series of revolutions were not mere tipping points alone; they were all effects
of a deep structural crisis in the lynch-pin of the system, the Soviet empire,
that underwent a state breakdown revolution. Revolts can spread by imitation;
but what happens to them depends on what kinds of structural conflicts are
beneath the surface.

The Continuum of Revolutionary Effects, from Superficial to Deep

If
we use the term “revolution” loosely to mean any change in government which is
illegal-- outside the procedures provided by the regime itself-- there are many
kinds of revolutions. They range from those with no structural effects at all,
through those which change the deepest economic, political, and cultural
institutions.

Coup
d’etat is the most superficial; there is no popular mobilization, only a small
group of conspirators inside the circles of power, or in the military, who
replace one ruler with another. Often there is not even the pretence of
structural change or appeal to the popular will.

Tipping
point revolutions are more ambitious; emotional crowds who are at the center of
the mechanism for transferring power are enthusiastic for grand if often vague
ideological slogans. But such revolts often fail, if the government is not
itself paralysed by a structural crisis. When tipping points succeed, the new
regime often has only ephemeral support, and may peter out in internal
quarrels, civil war, or reactionary restoration.

State
breakdown revolutions have a less ephemeral quality. The state cannot come back
into equilibrium until its own organizational problem is solved; and since this
means its fiscal, military, and administrative basis, reforms must go deep into
the main power-holding institutions. Whether or not the same ideological brand
of revolutionaries continues in office, these structural changes lay down a new
order that tends to persist-- at least until another deep crisis comes along.

Today: the Era of Tipping Point Revolutions

After
the fall of the Soviet Union and its empire, there have been many repetitions
of tipping point revolutions (Ukraine 2004, Georgia 2003, Kyrgyzstan 2005,
Serbia 2000) mixed with personal power-grabs that are little more than coups
masked as popular revolutions. The Arab Spring revolts have relied heavily on
the tipping point mechanism. Where the government has had a strong faction of
popular support, tipping point attempts have brought no easy transition; the
result has been full-scale civil war (Syria), or defeat of the revolutionary
mobilization by a mass counter-mobilization (the Green uprising in Iran 2009).
The popularity of tipping-point revolts, as in the anti-Islamist uprisings in
Turkey and Egypt, appear to have all the weaknesses of their genre.

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Collins, Randall. 1999. “Maturation of the State-Centered Theory
of Revolution and Ideology;” “The Geopolitical Basis of Revolution: the
Prediction of the Soviet Collapse.” chapters 1 and 2 in Macro-History:
Essays in Sociology of the Long Run. Stanford Univ. Press.